


losing my religion

by KilltheRhythm



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M, Will edit later, hurt and comfort to a certain degree, slight angst, takes place in the not very distant future, title comes from an R E M song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 14:56:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11808285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KilltheRhythm/pseuds/KilltheRhythm
Summary: Things aren't going so swimmingly for Alex.





	losing my religion

**Ox** : Can we talk [2:08 AM]

It's not the type of text Carl expects on a balmy Thursday night (or technically, Friday morning). Those are reserved for clingy exes, or when his little brother needs advice on whatever existential matter that has been plaguing him. It's not what you get from an old friend, a former teammate. But it's Alex.

 **Jenko** : alright [2:10 AM]

 **Ox** : In person. [2:10 AM]

Now is when he scratches his head. In person? Not over text, or phone call, or FaceTime, but in person. Carl lived all the way down in south east Brighton. Alex lived in north London. Normally laziness would dictate him to just tell Alex to talk over the phone or meet at a later, more specified date, but it's Alex he's talking to. Alex is an exception.

 **Jenko** : When and where [2:11 AM]

Remarkably quickly Alex fires back, but it's only to tell him that it doesn't matter where, it just has to be as soon as possible. Maybe he's half asleep, or just too tired, but he plays along until he gets a meeting spot. Now barely conscious, he pulls on real clothes and stumbles out to take the bus to whatever cafe in Sussex that Alex had chosen. He's halfway asleep at the bus stop and completely asleep for the ride, and still not really functioning when he enters the cafe.

Carl's never liked coffee, but it's best to be fully conscious for this, so he buys one anyways. It's already half gone by the time Alex finds him on the back patio. Probably a good thing, as he's now completely awake. Alex hasn't drunk any of his coffee, but there's already nervous energy alight in his eyes. Both of them have the same dark circles underneath, but he isn't tired like how Carl still is.

"I'm so sorry," he says to the taller man.

Carl blinks once, and then twice, trying to decipher this. "For what?"

"It's late and I've dragged you out of town for this and it's stupid and silly and I feel absolutely horri--"

"Shh," Carl goes, pulling out a chair next to him. "You're rambling."

Alex sits down, apologizing quietly once more. It's strange, considering how usually charismatic he is. Carl has seen him like this maybe once or twice, doubts anyone else has seen it ever. He pats him on the shoulder. It seems to be the right thing to do.

"Are you gonna tell me what's wrong?"

"How do you know something's wrong?"

"Don't act like that. Of course it is, or we wouldn't be here right now."

There's a silence that falls upon them. Alex sips his coffee. Carl does too, swinging his legs about. He knows Alex too well for them to play at this game for long. National team call ups are in a week. They're both on the list, by some grace of God. They could be talking about this then, a week into the future, when they share their room like they had the only two other times they were together on national duty. But this wasn't a get-to-it-in-a-week type of issue. Carl knows that.

So he is the one to break the silence. "You know I'm here for you, right? No matter what."

Alex nods, eyes downcast. Carl follows that up. He knows he's curt, but it's the best way to deal with it. "Can you tell me now?"

"I- I broke up with Perry."

Carl exhales softly. That was it? The absence of worry takes a weight off his chest. He could do break up advice. _He_ was the experienced one. No issue. "Alex, it's not gonna be that bad."

Alex's voice is firm. "It is."

"What do you mean? It's a break up, not the end of the world. You said it yourself, you didn't think she was the one."

"I mean," Alex looks at him pleadingly, and then away. A long silence hangs heavy between them.

The expressions they trade could be put in a guidebook to nonverbal communication. "I mean, I think I'm gay, Jenko."

He winces, waits for Carl to sigh or yell or get up and throw his chair or something, but instead he's met with more awful, deafening nothingness. Carl's face is expressionless. Alex wants a million things; a response, an exit, a reaction. Even something negative is better than this, it is something, something he can use to gauge this, to see if he's lost a friend or if he's just going to get a stern disappointed look.

Instead Carl chuckles for a moment. "That's it?"

"That's it?! Christ, Jenko, it's everything."

Carl scoots his chair closer, and wraps an arm around Alex. It's early summer, humid, but not yet hot all the time, and it makes it so much harder to keep his head clear. Not that his head was clear in the first place. He breaths in, shakily, and leans in to a familiar shoulder. "Really, it's, it's huge. I mean, this is the shit that fucking ruins it all."

"Nah," Carl says with enough baritone for Alex to hear it through his shoulder, or chest now really; his head had slipped. "As long as you're good, I'm good."

"But I don't know if I'm good."

Carl looks him in the eyes now, up close. He's honest. Maybe that's why Alex first became friends with him, when they first got to Arsenal (he can picture it now in his head, stretching with the rest of the reserves after his introductory tour. Most of them are a few years older than him and more than a few centimeters taller. One of the tallest walks over to stretch next to him as soon as they make eye contact. He looks friendly, and young, young enough to be the same age as him. Alex doesn't even get the chance to think before he opens his mouth to excitedly talk to this new, taller boy. "Why're you here with us?"

They switch to a quad stretch. "Oh, it's 'cos I'm shit at football."

"You can't be too shit if you're playing for Arsenal."

Tall guy smiles. "Yeah, but I'm not. If I weren't shit, I wouldn't be in the reserves.").

"Alex, I've known you for what, like ten years now? That's forever. You're good." Carl says, squeezing his shoulder.

Alex shakes his head. "How are you more okay with this than I am? God, it feels like my life is ending and you're over here full of sunshine and rainbows."

Carl shrugs. He looks really young in this lighting, even with the beard. It reminds Alex of when they were younger, though many things do when it's late at night and you're in an emotionally unstable state. "My mum raised me not to judge," he laughs.

Alex can feel Carl's chin brush over the top of his head. He smiles, feels his heart rate lower. "Tell mama Jenkinson I appreciate how she raised her son."

Carl laughs a little harder, his chest shaking Alex lightly. Alex wonders how he ever feared that his friend would spurn him. That doesn't ease the tightness in his lungs, though. Of course Carl would accept him, but who else would? He couldn't be sure that his teammates or his family or just anyone that he interacted with would tolerate how he was, and that is why the fear in the pit of his stomach will not dissolve. Alex forces himself not to cry.

"I know what does the trick when I feel bad," Carl says softly. Involuntarily, Alex breaks into a weak smile. He follows Carl out of the coffee shop and onto the road, down the street for a few blocks. He's unfamiliar with this part of the city, but Carl seems to know the way well.

They enter a corner store. Alex stares at Carl blankly. The taller man shushes him before he can even speak and leaves him outside the shop. Only a few minutes later he comes out with a half full grocery bag, which he refuses to open until they get to the park. Alex rolls his eyes. Carl plops down on the playset next to him.

"This is like the cure-all for... all." Carl laughs finally opening the paper bag. Inside are two cans of strong malt liquor, the weird Finnish candies that he liked and the soft toffies that Alex's grandmum bought him when he was little. They were his favorites.

Alex confusedly unwrapped a toffee. "How is getting drunk and eating candy going to help?"

Carl is already cracking open a can of the drink. "Mate, it makes you feel better like instantly. Ancient remedy for pains of the heart."

Alex doesn't have the energy to argue with Carl over that. He doesn't like the taste of malt liquor but downs it anyways. Fleetingly, he wonders what advice his Arsenal teammates would give: surely Alexis would tell him to work out thoroughly or Welbz would tell him to talk out his feelings. He doesn't feel the need to do either with Carl, though. There's understanding.

The alcohol hits him all at once, his head feeling loose and perception distorted. He leans on Carl, who is clearly feeling the same way. Alex tilts his head skywards. "Jenko, I think I see the North Star!"

Carl laughs hysterically. "That's a satellite, dumbass. Y'can't see the stars in Brighton."

Alex frowns, resting more weight on Carl. Even when he's drunk he doesn't like being wrong. Carl takes pity on him and within some blur of time and space and alcohol they are on the bus back to his place, away from the mocking sky. There is an old lady who clutches her purse tighter to herself, whether that be because they are drunk, appear to be lower class or because Alex was back. The middle aged man who is equally drunk that sits opposite from them glares too, though that is more likely at the arm that Carl keeps wrapped tightly around Alex.

He feels good despite the judgmental eyes on the bus. He's sugar-high and drunk and with Carl; all that he needs to be smiling in the early hours. Carl turns to look reassuringly at him every few moments, like his sense of happiness is going to shatter that quickly.

It turns out that it breaks as soon as they get into Carl's house. The home is small and full of photos and the last time he was here was when he was helping Carl move in and suddenly everything comes flooding back. He felt homesick for something, maybe for a sense of togetherness that he hadn't had sense breaking up with Perry. He didn't have his shit together. Here he was, drunk with a stomach full of coffee and candy and malt liquor like a teenager when he was now closer to thirty than twenty and maybe going through a quarter life crisis, because who figured out that they were gay at twenty-five-and-a-half?

Now he sits crying on the cold wood floor of Jenko's house at five AM, and Jenko kneels beside him to console him. He's saying a million things, that things were going to be ok and that his career wasn't going to end and something reassuring in Finnish and that he still loved him no matter what. Alex only half listens, but it calms him like how he always could, reassures his heartbeat back to a steady pace so he can look back up to Jenko with bleary eyes as the older man suggests they try to get some rest. That he'll nod to, get up wobbly like a deer to follow Jenko into a change of clothes.

He flops onto the other side of bed in a borrowed pair of pajama pants. They're far too long for his legs and have moomin characters all over them because they belong to Jenko, but they're already sharing a bed so that doesn't matter anymore. This was awkward about two times when they were teens and hadn't been since, but Alex feels uncomfortable all over again because now he feared that Carl wouldn't be alright with him here in bed.

He gets his answer in arms wrapped around him drunkenly and a kiss pressed to the top of his head. Instantly he's brought back to when they both played for Arsenal, when they roomed together drunk celebrating a Bayern game that didn't go badly for once. Carl had done just this then. It makes the ball of anxiety in the pit of his stomach dissipate. Things were still the same.

Jenko kisses his on the mouth then, and he knows that things are not. It makes sense in the way that drunk logic does, skipping from one moment to the next without any of the content in between because seemingly the next second Alex straddles him in bed. If the thought of making out with his best friend shirtless in bed had gone through his mind before he ignored it. Carl's arms are firm around his back, anchor him to the moment.

"Fuck," he breaths. He feels more sober, and less stressed. "Is this part of your dumb cure-all?"

Carl grins from underneath him, light flickering in his eyes and his hair all a mess. One of Alex's hands is still in it. Suddenly he notices that it's longer on the sides than when he was in London. They weren't teenagers anymore. "If you want it to be, then yeah, sure."

He flips over to be on top of Alex, who gazes up at him. Alex has a million ideas as what is to come next, none of which are exactly G rated, but they pass out drunk before they can get to them. Jenko's weight isn't too heavy on his chest in slumber, or at least it isn't any heavier than the stress he'd been carrying. Sleep is swift and immersive.

Alex wakes up wincing at the sun in his eyes through the blinds and the sound of seagulls. A hangover pounds through his skull. Carl sleeps face-down next to him, their fingers still linking together lightly. He lies back in bed and closes his eyes. Maybe things would be alright.

**Author's Note:**

> man I love Arsenal yet this is only the second story I've written for that fandom??? absolutely love Jenko and Chambo and their relationship, which I probably did not capture correctly here but it's like midnight and I'm writing this instead of sleeping lol. as much as I love carlamberlain I do hope that jenko goes somewhere else bc he deserves some playing time. like everyone I crave validation so tell me what you think in the comments!


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